It feels like summer at the movies: the (r)ides of March

The year has barely reached the quarter-pole, but at the cinemas it already feels as if we’re into summer: the ides of March have turned into the roller-coaster-thrill-rides of March. No one’s making movies any more. They’re all out making franchises.

It started in January with Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a fairy tale that was turned on its head and supplied with heavy modern armament. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood got to this story; the Brothers Grimm have been busier lately than the Brothers Coen and the Brothers Farrelly put together. Folk tales were always a rich source for Hollywood, but like the superhero genre — which provided several iterations of A-listers such as Superman and Batman before the studios started hunting around for also-rans like Green Lantern — there’s only so many times you can glorify Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood before you have to find something new.

Unhappily, the tale of Hansel and Gretel doesn’t really have much to say, except perhaps to beware of the candy house in the woods, so the movies had to doll it up with machine guns. Unnoticed in the cacophony was the February release of something called Hansel & Gretel Get Baked, wherein a witch lures teenagers to her house with marijuana. This would account for their attraction to a candy house later, but that movie came and went quietly.

After a brief stopover at the new Die Hard movie — a series that has migrated from Christmas to Valentine’s Day with a concomitant diminution of relevance — they were back at it this month with Jack the Giant Slayer, another unpromising classic with a more mercantile message: don’t trade your livestock for a handful of beans, unless they’re magic beans. Bryan Singer expanded this notion to a special-effects extravaganza, a $190-million lesson in how to make believable-looking giants and a computer-generated beanstalk that the Lumiere brothers — speak of the devil — could only dream of.

Unhappily, Jack is on the way to becoming the first big box office bust of the year, because it turns out that even if you festoon your blockbuster with additional characters, a love interest, a monumental battle scene and a couple of extra endings, people won’t care much unless you provide a) movie stars they love and b) a reason to care about the characters. Nicholas Hoult rescuing Eleanor Tomlinson doesn’t qualify.

So much for magic beans, although magic is what Hollywood appears to be banking on this year. There’s lots of it in Oz The Great and Powerful, a $200-million adventure with a summer feel, released in time for March Break.

It’s not to be confused with the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, a charming musical about a young girl’s adventure in a fantasyland populated by funny, sad, brave, desperate and lovable characters. This version is a prequel to that story, an eye-popping spectacular about a small-time circus magician who must redeem himself by adapting his cynical illusions to help the sweet-natured citizens of a magical kingdom. He does this mostly by borrowing from the tricks of movies themselves: director Sam Raimi — a graduate of the Spider-Man school of roller-coaster thrill rides — takes us to a place of overwhelmingly vibrant colours and expensive-looking 3D effects to a climax that borrows from the early astonishments of cinema. It’s like Hugo with Munchkins.

This Oz has the makings of a crowd-pleaser, despite several shortcomings, including James Franco’s uninspired work in the lead role, the lack of Judy Garland singing Over The Rainbow, and the fact that Bert Lahr died in 1967. Oz The Great And Powerful isn’t Dorothy’s story any more: it’s the story of the wizard, a character that has become a key figure in this year of self-conscious prestidigitation.

Thus, up next is The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a Steve Carell-Jim Carrey comedy about competing magicians in Las Vegas, some of them not unlike the glitzy showmen Siegfried and Roy. In May, Desperate Acts of Magic — a romantic comedy about magicians who fall in love — also features real magicians doing tricks. By June, we’ll be softened up for Now You See Me, a thriller about a troupe of illusionists who rob banks.

That practically takes us to summer, when the new Superman movie comes out and everything is back to normal.